Scrum Forum

Scrum master certification without attending class room training.

I am trying to find out is there anyway, can we get Scrum master certification without attending class room training i.e through self-study or by attending video training for example CBT nugget provides online video training.

Thank you for your interest in Scrum and Scrum.org! While Scrum.org does not provide online training courses, we do have many online resources freely available to help you learn more about Scrum and to help prepare for succeeding at our Professional-level assessments for certification.

The Scrum Guide is freely available for download in many different languages. You are also welcome to print the .PDF file(s) at any time for your own use. The Scrum Guide can be found here on our site at: http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides The Scrum Guide is the first place to start to learn about Scrum, and an important resource for studying for the various assessments that are available for purchase on Scrum.org. You may also take the Scrum Open and Developer Open at Scrum.org. These are free assessments that will test your knowledge of Scrum, and help to prepare you for our Professional-level assessments.

Hi Ragh Passing PSM is not easy. But there are some options to get certified without attending in classroom courses. There is one PSM I Self Study course which I think is one of the best. I could pass my exam with guide of this course. It includes everything you need. Their Agile/Scrum trainers also will be available to answer your technical questions while you’re studying. http://mplaza.pm/product/psm-exam-preparation-self-study/ Also you can find some free Material related to PSM. If you need more help send me an email.

Hey Tim, I think Charles is referring to the sales talk by mr. Kotobzadeh :) Scrum.org is .org for a reason right? This community is to help people on their journey in Scrum. So if I were Ragh I'd go with Joe :)

1: Read the Scrum Guides daily (15-30 Minutes) 2: Ask questions in the Scrum.org forum 3. Ask questions to SM's who have passed the test 4: Take the open Assessment's and score 100% consistently 5: Attend a conference and gain practical knowledge. 6: Join a local Scrum Meetup Group 7: Get a Mentor

If your looking for an easy way to get a certification, you may need to rethink the reason behind why you want it in the first place.

When I started preparing for the exam and read posts on this forum, I got the impression that exam will be tough especially with 85% pass threshold. However I would say that exam was not tough. I may have got an easy set of questions though. :)

There were no long questions/options with wordy details to make one lost in interpretation. Most of the questions were straightforward which required clear understanding of scrum framework. There were no direct questions on Nexus although there were a couple on scenarios of multiple scrum teams working on a project

I completed the exam in 45 minutes, started spending remainder of time in reviewing the answers but mistakenly clicked on Submit button and so finished the exam in about 50 min. Got 2 questions wrong and now wondering which ones I could not answer correctly.

I have extensive background in software development but agree with JM Olsen that one does not necessarily needs that background to clear the exam. All what is needed is to understand and remember the contents of the scrum guide properly (I read it about 4-5 times) and then do well in open assessments (especially Scrum Open and Product Owner ones, Nexus is good, one may not worry too much with heavy technology related question on Developer Open ones for PSM1 certification I think) offered by scrum.org.

I just got my PSM 1 certification yesterday. Cleared with 97.5%. This is what I have to add:

Read the scrum guide inside out. Its your bible. For practice questions take the free assessment on scrum.org till u score 100 % I also bought the practice module sold by management plaza, I highly recommend that, it has 3 sample assessments, 80 questions each. These will give you enough practice and exposure for the real exam. I did one week of self study, I am completely new to IT/SOFTWARE development but was able to get through.

Hi, As evidenced here, you can self study and get your PSM1. I passed mine last month with 93% through self study and I'm still feeling good about it. So good in fact that I've written a post detailing my experience at www.psm1-selfstudyguide.blogspot.com (no plugging, no advertising... just how I did it). It's basically a list of fellow PSM1 self studiers who inspired me. And some of them have been mentionned above. Hopefully you will find some good information for you there.

The reading of the documents (points 1 to 3) I did them during day 1 and 2. Then all the practice tests and additional reading (points 4 to 6) I did them in day 3. And points 7, 8 and 9 I did them in day 4.

The exam had a lot of question you find in the Scrum open tests, so do them until you have seen all the question. As a general thing for any exam I create a file with failed questions from practice to review them. The exam is easy and almost all the content is in The Scrum Guide. There were a couple of questions in the exam about burndown charts, so I would take a look at them.

The interface of the exam is the question, several answers (if more than 1 answer is correct, the question will tell you how many to select. For example "Select 3 answers"), a button to bookmark the question, a button to move to the next question, a button to move to the previous question, a button to see all the bookmarked question and a timer.

As for the time, I went through the 80 questions and I still had 27 minutes left. By the time I reviewed the 12 bookmarked questions I had 9 minutes left. Then my browser FROZE!!! As recommended before starting the test, I refreshed my browser (F5) and I was back in the exam. Then I clicked finish and I got my grades!

3. Well... The certification is just like any other standard credentials used in the market. It will open the doors for initial interviews with prospective employers. There after, it depends on actual competencies you can demonstrate from experience and indepth understanding. I did my my CSM. However, PSM seems to be much better in imparting the fundamentals of scrum. So, it could be a great learning experience too

Hello Kushboo, I wrote the PSM 1 today and cleared with 98%. I didn't buy any paid course nor did any training and solely relied on self study.

This is what i did and suggest

1- Read the scrum and nexus guide inside out atleast 4-5 times. The trick is understand the implied meaning of sentences as a lot of the questions in the assessment will not be straight forward but rather implied

2 - Do all the open assessments atleast 7-8 times scoring 100% consistently. I think around 10-15 questions in the PSM were repeated from the Open Assessments.The open assessments are much easier than the actual PSM.

Thank you Amir and congratulation!! Can you please tell me which open assessment to practice for PSM1. There are 4 different assessment: 1) Scrum Open 2)Nexus open 3)Product owner open and 4)Developer open ?

Posted By khushboo c on 13 Jun 2016 04:08 PM Thank you Amir and congratulation!! Can you please tell me which open assessment to practice for PSM1. There are 4 different assessment: 1) Scrum Open 2)Nexus open 3)Product owner open and 4)Developer open ?

Posted By khushboo c on 14 Jun 2016 09:06 AM Thank you for prompt response. I thought everything is coming from the scrum guide but i do not see anything about Nexus in it. Any suggestion?

No, I guess you have been misinformed.There will be some questions on the application of scaled scrum too. I am not sure if you have a background in Scrum/Agile. If you have not worked, getting a training will be a good idea. You will need to understand the principles of scrum in depth, else it might be difficult to clear the assessment.

Congrats! Did you have any questions regarding Nexus on the exam? I wonder whether I need to read Nexus Guide as well. Did you buy MPlaza assessment? I noticed several mistakes in their manual. What's your opinion on their assessment questions? Did you answered questions in all types of Scrum Open Assessments?

Yes there were questions regarding Nexus on the exam. Yes i did by MPlaza assessment , it helps to practice more questions. Yes i did all types of Scrum Open Assessment but not give much attention to developer one.

Hello Everyone, I am sofware developer having experience of about 7+ years in asp.net coding. Would like to get Scrum certification. Please let me know which one to opt for the certification and why should i take up that particular scrum certification. Which one should i go with for my career developments 1.PSF 2.PSM 3.PSD 4.PSPO 5.SPS

if you wan't to prepare on the exam on your own, you can't forecast, how long it will take. Well, 2-3 hours a week isn't to intensive (and that's why you'll need a long long time). If you take it serious, than you need to put a lot more efforts into it. I prepared on PSM I and PSPO I in approx. 6-7 weeks and studied ~2 hours a day. But we're people...different... that's why no one can tell you, how long it will take.

With regards to the Open Exams, I found the Nexus Open to be somewhat relevant to the questions asked on the PSM, and the Scrum Open to be extremely relevant. If I had to guess based on the other level-1 certification exams, ~15% of the questions will cover Scaled topics. Of course, that depends heavily on which random questions you get from the test bank. Not every test has the same weighting of questions, and actually not every test is even worth the same number of points.

However, I did not find practicing the Product Owner Open or Scrum Developer Open exams to be particularly useful for PSM prep. Great stuff to know, but not necessary for certification. My personal recommendation is to spend the majority of your study time should be spent on Scrum Master and Scrum topics, with a small amount of time dedicated to understanding Nexus.

External to the exams, I'd still suggest learning the various roles as well as the scaled framework. As a Scrum Master you will be expected to work on both single-team and multi-team projects, and you may need to facilitate a Developer or Product Owner in their specific roles. The more you can learn about those roles, the better you can perform as a facilitator.

Although several months late, I wanted to address Radhika's question since this has become an active topic again, and the question went unanswered.

A software developer who wants to continue in a development role, I would place the most value on the PSD, followed closely by the PSM. The PSD covers testing and development roles and tasks, while the PSM covers the Scrum Framework from a higher level. Both are valuable, but the PSD more closely aligns with the job role. SPS is also helpful but many of the Nexus tasks will not impact a Developer's work drastically, unless they are a team delegate for the Nexus events. PSPO is the least valuable, because while the Developers and Product Owner do communicate frequently, their specific tasks do not overlap significantly.